The Well of the North Wind

by Steven, Kenneth;

  ‘Colum will be praying for us even now!’ Neil cried. ‘Can you not see him?’

  Larach nodded, still smiling. Yes, Colum would be on his knees for them, asking for their safe passage. He thought of the last days of his return from the north and still the tears came to burn his eyes. It was almost too much to believe that he had survived, yet it had happened just the same.

  From then on it was not the wind but the sea. Sudden currents that turned them and took them by surprise, and it was the length of that coast Neil had forgotten. It was beautiful, with sudden caves and cliffs and hollowed-out passages, but he had no more than time for a second’s glance at such things. All he cared about was that they went fast enough. Colum had been as anxious as they had ever seen him, and it was more than his struggle against illness and age. That they saw and knew well enough, but this was more. And as Neil had not quite understood what went on in his mind that day of the funeral and the burial on the moor, so he could not completely see now. There was something beyond him; something he could not find. A missing piece.

  They passed an islet of seals and Neil turned to shout the news to Larach. But he stopped. Larach had fallen asleep after all, was curled in the bottom of the boat.

  *

  They did not think that even Colum had come so far that he could calm a storm with his prayers, yet what did they know? For when they gathered Fian from Goloch and brought him, slow and careful, down into the boat, still wrapped in blankets, it was all but night. Was it better to wait, sleep a few hours, and start back at first light? Larach was tempted; he fought his own weakness all the time, yet they could not forget Ruach and how he had begged them to return right away. Any longer and it might be too late. Goloch came down to the boat and made sure that Fian was safe where he lay. The boy crouched there, the great bewilderment of orange-red curls flowing over his neck. He spoke to Fian even though he could not hope to hear him, Larach and Neil looking at each other, smiling softly.

  ‘Thank you for all you have done,’ Larach said as the boy stood tall, and he clasped his shoulder. ‘There is no doubt you have saved his life.’

  Neil heard the words and thought at once how Colum would have corrected them. It was not Goloch’s doing, but God’s alone! You got used to thinking of your answers when you had been with Colum long enough.

  ‘Send me word of how he is!’ Goloch called as he started back up the hill. The two men promised they would and then glanced back at each other, the unspoken question in their eyes.

  ‘It’s calmer,’ Neil said. ‘Without a doubt the wind has eased. And look out to the west; the skies are clearer. I think we have to take our chance.’

  So it was decided. The whole journey in reverse, and it was Larach that kept watch over Fian and made sure he drank. Goloch had given them precious fresh water, enough and more for the journey back.

  And it was calmer, almost the calm after the storm. Stars above their heads and only sometimes – less and less often – a great boom of wind. Neil saw a light on the edge of the long coast and he had the chance to look at it now; he wondered who lived there, for he had not known there were any folk at all hidden in the shadows of those cliffs.

  It must have been the very middle of the night when they got back. Lights on the shore then; lights that watched for them and waited. Neil smiled to himself: it would be Ruach, who else but Ruach. He would not have rested had he not seen Fian’s return with his own eyes! And there, sure enough, Ruach; moving about and restless and muttering things to himself. But he was not alone. Colum had come to wait, too, had made his slow and painful way down the long path to know that Fian was safe. There was a sadness in his eyes, Neil thought, and something else he could not read. Yes, something else.

  *

  But it was neither Colum nor Ruach who took charge of Fian that night; it was Baan, the mother of Mara. She had gone to see Colum herself to ask him, her voice small and quiet, and he had seen her courage in asking. It would be good for her, and he did not say no – he could not. In his heart of hearts he had hoped she would ask.

  So Fian was carried in the middle of the night by Neil and Larach to the door of the fisherman’s dwelling. It was wind-still now and perhaps there would be frost by the morning. Their feet made not a sound as they bore Fian up from the boat. Only Ruach came stumbling and chattering after them, anxious and excited. For the storm inside him had broken; the shadow had at last manifested itself and he was free. He was just a mother hen fretting over her chick now, wanting to make sure that Fian had everything he might need to get better. But Baan would not waste any time on him; she thudded the door shut on Ruach in the end and set to work.

  Her husband slept. Huge and dark, his shadow curled away to the wall. She touched him to make sure he slept, and then went back to see to Fian. All that day she had prepared things, though her most precious vials for healing were all but empty. She must not think about that now; she must close her heart to all of it and begin her work to bring him back. There would be no replacing the liquid in those vials before Beltane had passed, but she would give the last drops to him if he needed them all the same.

  And so Baan did not sleep at all that night. Instead she banked the peat on the fire so that the flames sprang up from the sleeping embers. She unwound Fian from all the blankets and washed him first, slowly and softly so she did not waken him. Since the time that Ruach had come to him in dream there had been no fever, but he was somehow very far away. His body was weak; she could see the physical evidence of that, and see, too, that his spirit was hidden away somewhere deep inside. There was little she could do but sing, and that was what she did. A song that she had inherited from her own grandmother that was said to have come from the seals. It was the strangest and the most beautiful song she knew, and there were no words. Only sounds to be sung and a story that might be guessed. But to Baan it was a song of healing, that was all she felt for sure. And she sang it now as she washed Fian and wrapped him in new blankets. She rocked him as she might have rocked a young child, for there was healing even in that. And she watched him until the first light came beautiful across the island. Only then did she sleep herself, but not deeply lest he should waken.

  Up in the tower, Ruach looked at page after page of Fian’s work. He had not been able to sleep and it had not mattered at all. There was a child’s joy in his heart that nothing could diminish. Fian had come back at last. He did not doubt that he would be well in the end, though neither did he know how long it might take. But Ruach did not fear that now. Like a young child he turned over page after page, marvelling. The first light broke over the far island and filled the tower. He only wished that Fian might be here now, that they could stand together and talk and laugh again. They would walk down together to the south end and search for green stones. Ruach was anxious for nothing; for once, his spirit was untroubled, and he only wished that his dearest friend might be with him. He was a puppy without its master.

  *

  Someone was writing in the sand. Fian could see the man, but only from behind. It was as if he was up above him, on a rock ledge perhaps, and looking down. The man knelt in the sand, and the only sound Fian could hear was that of his finger moving as it made letters in the sand. It must have been wet for there to have been any sound at all. Fian did all in his power to stretch forward to see what letters the man wrote, but he could not. He felt maddened for he wanted to know, he had to know – but there was nothing that he could do. He could not go any further forward; it was impossible. But the letters and the words that were being shaped in the sand concerned him all the same, of that he was certain. They were words of life or death, but he did not know which.

  *

  ‘What will you do when Fian wakens?’

  Ruach was driving Colum almost to distraction. He began to wish that some other dream might take him off to his hidey-hole at the south end, for he was like a little boy who asks why the sky is blue or the moon yellow and will accept no answer until sleep has finally knocked him o
ut. Colum wanted peace to think about many things, and Ruach was not about to give him any.

  ‘I will welcome him back and I will give thanks that he has lived!’

  ‘What will you tell him? Will you tell him or will you wait?’

  Colum had been searching for his stick and was furious that he could not find it. Now he stopped and turned on Ruach and drew himself up to his old height. ‘I am thinking more what I will tell you in a moment! I wish that you would go and round up a flock of sheep, Ruach! I love you, but not quite as much as I should!’

  He found his stick and sighed, and leaned his great hand on Ruach’s shoulder. ‘I am only glad that he is alive and is here with us again. Is that not enough for now?’

  Ruach was left in the shadows. He thought about the words and weighed them like stones in his hands. But the answer only gave him another question, and he was on the verge of chasing after Colum to ask it. For a second he stood outside himself and heard his own racing heart and tongue. He was better off on his own. He would tire himself out walking to the south-west corner and chatter to himself as he went. He was a nuisance and better off out of their way.

  But Colum did not forget what Ruach had asked just the same. He would like to have done, but the words of the question echoed in his head all that day, and was there, too, when the last candle flame hissed into silence. What was he to say to Fian but the truth, and how would Fian ever forgive him?

  *

  And so the spring came, or rather it was born slowly as a lamb might be. There was a day the children went in a flock towards the sheltered glen at the island’s heart, and there they found flowers they had never seen before. Yet the next they played and laughed among snowflakes, and for a morning the rocks of the highest hill were white. Larach went, reluctant and slow, to find Colum one evening, and he looked everywhere but Colum’s eyes as he spoke to him. He was asking to go to Ireland, for he was restless. And Colum smiled and nodded, not because he was glad but because he had seen and known before Larach came to tell him. What more was there he could do than give his blessing? Yet that night Colum wept, for he had not wanted him to go.

  He felt the cold. The wind found ways into his cell and kept him awake. He thought of many things, but more and more of the last journey. He had spoken so often of having no fear, of putting the trembling hand into that of the great hand, yet the wind found him and kept him awake. There were many things he did not understand, and he was not ready. But no one ever was.

  And Fian slept. Baan kept watch over him, even when her husband went to the fishing grounds and was gone long days. She watched over Fian. She did not think that he would die now, but she feared many other things. There were times she asked herself why she did this, especially on the nights when the wind came round the dwelling like wolves and the sleet drove against the walls, hour after long hour. Why was it that she looked after Fian? She had only once gone to seek him out and that was to warn him to stay clear and be careful. What was it that she wanted now? What was it that slept in her heart?

  A whale beached itself on the west side of the island and it was seen as nothing less than a gift from God in the hungriest time of the year. They left behind only the white frame of the bones, knocked about in the great waves of the high tide, and soon even that would return to the sea.

  Sometimes Ruach came to see Fian, though he was afraid of Baan and did not know what to say to her. He would hover outside the dwelling, his hands chasing each other like butterflies, until at last she appeared for more water from the well or to see if there was a drying wind, and there was Ruach, for all the world like a forlorn child. She brought him in, always, and in the end he would even take a cup of milk from her and remember to thank her as she scurried about her tasks and he sat by Fian. He whispered a prayer for him, reaching out to touch his hand, and then he would be gone. Baan came back to find nothing but the cup, and she smiled and shook her head. They were strange creatures, these monks, but they had goodness all the same.

  Then at last her husband returned from the fishing and he had torn his cheek. Now she had two sick men to attend to, though Fian was the easier of them by far. It was all she could do to persuade the other to let her sew the flap of skin that first night, and he grumbled and thumped around the dwelling afterwards as though she had tried to stab him. But she knew just the same that he had much to carry. There was a pile of rocks in his heart. She took the mending she was doing and sat on her stool beside Fian, and decided to let the story of the torn cheek come in its own time. It was nothing more than another evening. Still the snow lay on the higher hills, but here on the island the flowers that the monks called Easter lilies were rising again from the ground, and soon their orange-gold trumpets would blow once more in the wind. That was what she was thinking, especially that, when she put down her work for a moment, was about to get up, and found she was looking right into Fian’s open eyes. They held her, strong and well.

  ‘Where is Mara?’ he asked.

  *

  Ruach was down at the south end, but not at the beach where he found his beloved green stones. It was a full moon and he was restless, as he always was on such nights. There was no sleep in him; he was wide awake and had to move. He found himself in the jumble of outcrops and cliffs at the very south-eastern tip of the island, as much because he had not been there before. He found a gully that was protected on all sides by smooth walls of stone. Below was a long tongue of golden sand, and at different levels tiny beaches of pebbles. He had to find a way down. He paced the ledge like a caged animal, and then saw what might be half-steps carved by nature at the very end of the gully. He went there and was scrambling down in the blink of an eye. He stepped down and back, and he found himself in a kind of cocoon. For a moment he stopped and looked all about him, unafraid and at peace. He turned to face the sea, looked out of the little gully with its dark rock walls, and there was the whole silver ball of the moon above, not yet high in the sky. Ruach staggered forwards, forgetting in that moment the little beaches and the green treasures they might hide. It was beautiful; he wished he was not alone, that he could have shared this with someone else. Fian would have understood, he decided. Fian would have loved this too.

  He went right down to where the tide’s edge was lipping the sand. He might have walked out on that silver path all the way across the sea. He felt a deep sadness fill him at that moment, not because of what he did not know but rather what he did. He felt helpless and of no use. There were times when he could be a messenger; he could carry word of things so people understood. That was worthwhile, for all the pain it gave him. But there was nothing to be done with this sadness, for it had not been hidden. He felt the pain of it like the blade of a rusty, blunt knife. Deeper and deeper it cut, with a raw soreness that was beyond description.

  In the end the moon passed behind a thin veil of cloud and there was a murmur of breeze – not even as much as that: just a breath. Ruach shivered and for a moment he felt afraid; he looked all around at the walls of the gully as though someone must be standing there watching him. But there was no one. Carrying the broken fragments of himself, Ruach staggered back to the beach he had come from. He curled under the overhanging rocks like a frightened child.

  *

  ‘Mara is dead,’ Baan said. ‘She fell ill after you left. By the time you were carried back she was dead and we had buried her.’

  ‘Dead?’ Fian repeated, and was not able to believe the word. He tried to sit up but there was no strength in his arm and he fell back. He thought of the chapel in the rocks where he had gone in the days of storm; he saw himself there again as the one candle flame fluttered above his head, as he prayed and prayed that she might get well, that she might not die. He had prayed as never before in his life, for he was not a monk – he was not one of them. He was a scribe, an artist; he did not have their faith. His was as small and frail as that single candle flame, fighting to endure the storm. But he had believed; he had dared to believe she would be well, that his pra
yers might be answered. Before he had fallen into fever he had dared to believe it might be so. He did not even feel grief at that moment; he felt nothing but disbelief. It was not possible that Mara was dead. He did not believe it could be.

  His eyes came back and he saw Baan in front of him. He did not see her as a mother who had lost her daughter. His head was still slow; he felt so weak. Yet he forced himself to think all the same; to think and to remember. And the morning on the beach came back to him; when she held him and he had promised. He struggled up even though he felt sick and dizzy, for now he had to know. He leaned out close to her and rested himself on one arm. He gathered his words.

  ‘I was sent away. I was sent to the island, after you talked to me and made me promise. For no reason. Colum sent me and I could not say goodbye.’

  ‘It was I,’ she whispered. ‘I asked him to send you away and he agreed.’

  Fian hid his face in his hands and words twisted out of him that were made of darkness. She recoiled from him and he went on, words he had never uttered before that were out of a dead place, a place that smelled. His voice rose and he reached out to drag her from where she sat. She screamed and fell backwards and he was sick. He kept speaking darkness and was sick again. He still saw her and her eyes searched him, appalled, but they could not look away. Until he had nothing more in him and he slid away unconscious.

  *

  She fed him and he ate. He ate with one purpose only: to leave there and never look upon her again. He had been betrayed. He had been sent away because she had not trusted him, and she had got Colum to do it for her. He did not know for whom he had the greater anger: he hated them both. He had not seen Mara again because of them; they had taken her away from him. What he felt for God he did not know; all he thought of were the hours of prayer in the rock chapel, often as he crouched there shivering with cold as the storm went wild outside. He had been betrayed; that was all he knew.